Chess: Fabiano Caruana, world No 2, wins fourth US Championship title
Fabiano Caruana, the world No 2, retained his national title on Wednesday when he scored an unbeaten 7/10 in the US Championship at St Louis. First prize was $62,000 (£48,000). Caruana’s winning margin was a comfortable point and a half, following a final round where he won while his nearest rivals all drew or lost leading to a six-way tie for second on 5.5/10.
The runners-up included the controversial Hans Niemann, who cemented his place among the world top 20, the rising talents Samuel Sevian and Awonder Liang, and the established grandmasters Levon Aronian, Ray Robson and Leinier Domínguez. Wesley So, a pre-tournament favourite, scored 5/10, drew every game, and dropped out of the world’s top 10.
Caruana now joins an elite group who have all won at least four US titles: Jackson Showalter, Samuel Reshevsky, Bobby Fischer, Larry Evans, Walter Browne, Yasser Seirawan, Alexander Shabalov, Gata Kamsky and Hikaru Nakamura. Among these, he has been closer to the world crown than any apart from Fischer, holding Magnus Carlsen to 6-6 in their 2018 title match before losing a speed tie-break.
With a peak of 2851, Caruana is the third-highest-rated chess player in history after Carlsen and Garry Kasparov. He confirmed after the tournament that he will go for a fifth crown in 2025.
This low-scoring contest was affected by the alleged offboard assault reported in last week’s column. Subsequently, Christopher Yoo’s father issued a statement, while Yoo himself made a written personal apology.
Chess is a mind sport, but it still has physical components including adrenaline and increased heart rate under stress. If you win, celebrate. If you lose, you are trapped in your negative emotions, without a physical outlet. Hence, coping with defeat can be difficult, especially after losing an advantage.
Most players try to deal with it internally, and Boris Spassky once cried in the street after a painful loss to Mikhail Tal. There are a few cases of taking it out on the hotel furniture or the opponent, but a fist to an innocent bystander is something else.
Carissa Yip won her first eight games in the US Women’s Championship and was in contention for the $64,000 Fischer prize for anyone equalling his 11/11 “picket fence” in the 1963-64 US Championship.
Yip lost her next two games, but still retained her crown with a round to spare. The 21-year-old won the second board gold medal with 10/11 at the Olympiad, and is on the verge of breaking into the world top 30. She can also realistically aim at the $100,000 Cairns Chess Queen award for US women who become grandmasters at open level.
Ethan Pang, nine, who earlier this year became the youngest ever 2200-rated player and who last month beat three grandmasters in a single tournament, reached a landmark 2300 live rating on Thursday when he led the current Vezerkepzo IM tournament in Budapest with an unbeaten 4/6.
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Pang has so far added a further 69 Fide points to his existing 2233 rating, which is already the highest in the world for an under-10. Two other English children, Bodhana Sivanandan and Kushal Jakhria, also rank among the world’s top six nine-year-olds. If Pang is still above 2300 at the end of the tournament, he will break the Argentinian prodigy and “chess Messi” Faustino Oro’s world age record as the youngest published 2300 player by around four days, although Oro would still be younger in terms of when the record was actually set.
There could be yet more to come for Pang at Budapest, although it is a long shot. As the table above shows, Pang is the lowest rated of the six competitors, who include two grandmasters and two international masters, yet he leads the field.
Quick GuideStrade and Toma lead way as three women make top four in Guernsey
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The Channel Isles have a long chess history, and Guernsey’s annual international is now in its 48th year. It is staged in the autumn, with Jersey’s similar event in the spring. Both have given many English talents their first taste of an overseas event, starting with Jersey 1975 when Nigel Short, then aged nine, made his international debut. However, there has never been a result like Guernsey 2024, where three of the top four places went to women and the fourth to a grandmaster.
Anita Strade (Guernsey) and Katarzyna Toma (England) shared first with 5.5/7, followed by the No 1 seed, GM Keith Arkell (England), and Olivia Smith (Wales) and two other players on 5/7. All three women are in their late-30s, and for each of the trio it was a lifetime best result, as they performed between 100 and 250 points better than their official ratings.
Last month’s Budapest Women’s Olympiad can take some credit, for all three competed there, with Strade and Smith making excellent scores on top board for their countries and Toma solid on board four for England. Arkell rarely loses in similar tournaments and won all his five games against male opponents, but both Smith and Toma defeated him in their individual games. Leonard Barden
Pang’s tournament performance rating (TPR) so far is 2450, which is exactly the requirement for an international master norm. A score of 3/4 in the remaining rounds would give Pang his first IM norm, at four months younger than when Oro normed by finishing second in a tournament in southern Argentina. It would also probably make the Westminster Under School pupil the youngest player ever to win an international master tournament – but it is indeed a long shot.
The quality of Pang’s games has been high. In round one he defended a Nimzo-Indian in classical style to equalise and draw, in round two his Carlsen-style grind won a marathon rook ending, in round three he cutely trapped his opponent’s h6 bishop by f6,g5 and Nf5, in round four he drew with good understanding of the Sicilian Sveshnikov, and in round five, after being surprised in the opening by 1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 d4 cxd4 4 Nxd4 Qb6, he fought back to a drawn rook and pawn ending. Pang’s games are available in play-through format at chess-results.com.
3943: 1 Rxh7+! and Black resigned. If 1…Qxh7 2 Qe8+ Qg8 3 Rh1 mate. If 1…Kxh7 2 Rh1+ Kg8 3 Qxd5+ when if 3…Qf7 4 Nh6+ forks king and queen and soon mates, or 3…Kf8 4 Rh8+ Qg8 5 Rxg8 mate.